Influencia de la frustración en la conducta de automedicación emocional en ratasun enfoque psicobiológico

Abstract

Addiction constitutes a health issue with medical, social and legal implications. The self-medication hypothesis suggests that an individual chooses a specific drug of abuse depending on the substance’s ability to alleviate a negative emotional state induced by aversive situations. The main goal of this dissertation was to analyze the role of self-medication induced by reward loss in the onset of anxiolytics consumption in animals, and to identify the brain regions that regulate this behavior. The results showed that animals voluntarily consume anxiolytics under basal conditions and increase this consumption after experiencing reward loss. This behavior was abolished by exposing animals to partial reinforcement. The reactivity to reward loss was dependent on the lateral habenula function. Therefore, animal models based on reward loss are useful to analyze the role of emotional self-medication in the onset of anxiolytics intake.